100: Behind 100 Episodes - The Five Leadership Truths

This is a massive milestone — 100 episodes. And in this raw, honest, high-energy solo episode, Sean pulls back the curtain on what he’s learned from every guest, every conversation, and every uncomfortable stretch that shaped him into a No Limit Leader.

If you’ve ever wondered what truly separates leaders who rise from leaders who stall out, this episode is your roadmap. Sean breaks down the five truths that show up again and again in top performers — truths that will challenge you, push you, and remind you that your growth is not optional if you want your influence to expand.

This is your wake-up call. Your next level requires a different version of you — and this episode shows you exactly where to start.

⏱️ Chapter Markers

00:00 — Welcome to Episode 100
Sean reflects on the journey, the early days, and why reps matter more than polish.

04:02 — Why You Must Lead Yourself First
Identity drives behavior — and your leadership ceiling is set by your personal standards.

16:14 — Service Builds Trust (Not Titles)
How true influence is earned by elevating others and aligning actions with values.

28:21 — Lead With Questions, Not Answers
The communication shift that transforms teams, relationships, and problem-solving.

41:45 — Resilience & Adaptability: The Real Performance Edge
Why calm, intentional leaders thrive — and why comparison kills momentum.

55:12 — Purpose: The North Star of No Limit Leadership
Crafting a mission big enough to stretch you — and clear enough to guide your decisions.

01:09:40 — The Vision for the Next 100 Episodes
What’s coming: movement-building, community growth, the biggest guests yet, and a request for listeners.

In this special 100th-episode celebration, Sean distills the five universal leadership patterns that have surfaced across CEOs, founders, creatives, military leaders, entrepreneurs, and world-class coaches. These are the truths that define No Limit Leaders — and the ones keeping most people stuck.

Get ready to challenge your identity, your habits, your resilience, and your mission. Because the next version of you requires a higher level of self-leadership.

If this podcast has impacted you, Sean asks just one thing: share this episode with one person who’s ready to grow.

No Limit Leadership is the go-to podcast for growth-minded executives, middle managers, and team leaders who want more than surface-level leadership advice. Hosted by executive coach and former Special Forces commander Sean Patton, this show dives deep into modern leadership, self-leadership, and the real-world strategies that build high-performing teams. Whether you're focused on leadership development, building a coaching culture, improving leadership communication, or strengthening team accountability, each episode equips you with actionable insights to unlock leadership potential across your organization. From designing onboarding systems that retain talent to asking better questions that drive clarity and impact, No Limit Leadership helps you lead yourself first so you can lead others better. If you're ready to create a culture of ownership, resilience, and results, this leadership podcast is for you.

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:15)
Welcome to the No Limit Leadership podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton. Today is a milestone. 100 episodes ago, I started what was then called Leadership After Hours and is now called No Limit Leadership with a simple mission, to explore what leadership really looks like at its highest level. And my goal here is to empower listeners and explore what real leaders are facing today and

⁓ fundamental truths and wisdom and sharing best practices and challenging ideas so that everyone that listens to this gets value out of it and can start to explore what they are capable of as a leader. Right? I didn't want just buzzwords or corporate cliches, but the human side of leadership, the mindset, the character, the discipline, the heart. And, you know, I topped right into it, not knowing where this would go.

You know, I hopped into this with both feet first. And if you watch these, first episodes, you'll know, right? had a studio in my office space and I wanted to have three cameras and I had an audio engineer and I like how this vision of when you see these giant podcasts, right? And I wanted to say, you know, make it, make mine like that. Woo. Learned a lot about podcasting, learn a lot about leadership, learn a lot about myself in this process.

You know, now we're virtual and man, you you look at it's hard, right? We always do the comparison. We start looking at other things. When I look at those podcasts and you start realizing, oh, they have like a 25 person team and each episode they're spending 30 grand to make this podcast look this way. And they're on episode 700. I'm on episode four. And, you know, I'd say the biggest, you know, maybe compliment is

Erin, who's, ⁓ has worked with me when we started the podcast and now was started working with me again, started doing to the post-production. And when she, you know, had been away for about a year and came back to work for me, she listened, she called me up to like, you know, you sound way better than you did back then. So, hopefully you've noticed, hopefully I've gotten better, ⁓ as a host, I would say, take that as maybe a lesson, just dive in and get reps and do the thing.

One of the reasons, one of the many reasons why I wanted to start this podcast was because as a coach, what I realized was probably, and a leader really, what are the two skills that sort of define that, that are so critical as a leader and especially as an executive coach. And it's being a great listener and asking great questions. And I realized that those weren't necessarily strengths of mine. And so I thought, well, if I do this podcast, I will get lots of reps in doing those two things.

In my opinion, it definitely has worked nowhere near where I want to be, but I feel like it has illuminated a lot of things that I had to improve. And so I want to thank every one of you, whether you just recently joined us or whether you've been one of the OGs from the beginning with No Limit Leadership. Just thank you for being a part of this. This literally is a passion project. I have poured way more money into this and time than I have monetarily gotten out of it, but I've gotten so much out of it.

⁓ in terms of my own development and, we are going to continue to do this thing and we're going continue to grow this. I have very big vision for what this can become for what we can do with our community as it continues to grow, ideas around, ⁓ movements, hopefully in the next year that will come out, to get more people on board vision around live events, around ways to, for to connect no limit leaders.

in various spaces. yeah, just thanks for being a part of that. And I just wanted to do a special episode today on our hundredth episode to reflect back and you know, over a hundred conversations, patterns begin to emerge. Truth surfaced again and again, whether that guest was a CEO, a coach, a founder, a creative, a military leader, an entrepreneur. I wanted to share.

five principles that I pulled out from all of those conversations and look at how they really maybe start to give us some context of defining what no limit leadership really is. So these aren't theories, aren't necessarily like fleshed out frameworks, but hopefully they're realities you can feel in your bones, in your soul when you hear them that just like click and make sense. And maybe you can do some introspection about where you're at.

in relation to these five truths, these five realities, the top five lessons and patterns I have seen emerge through no limit leadership. Let's get into it. So the first example, no surprise here, is you have to lead yourself first, right? Like every great leader I've spoken to agrees on one thing, leadership starts with yourself. You cannot lead others if you're not actively leading yourself.

your habits, your mindset, your personal standards. All of this sets the ceiling for what, for who and what you can influence. And I think a real key here is your self identity as a leader, right? This isn't just about, I'm gonna do a few tips and tricks to try to be the healthiest I can, you know, I'm going to read some books, I'm gonna do some development. That's all well and good. But I want you to...

shift the very foundation of the reality of how reality occurs to you and think of yourself as a leader and the first person that you must commit to leading is yourself, which means we have to lead intentionally. And I'm so passionate about this because I firmly believe that the journey to becoming the leader that you're truly capable of is the path.

to becoming the greatest version of yourself. So this isn't the No Limits Management podcast. This is the No Limit Leadership podcast because a manager is a position you hold. It's about authority. A leader is a person you become. It's about influence. Authority can be given. Influence must be earned.

when you start viewing yourself, when you shift that identity and not just thinking of yourself as a manager, as other people or an entrepreneur or whatever, but you are a leader, you are a leader. When you shift that identity, you start holding yourself to a higher standard of being. And then you start making decisions and taking actions that align with this higher calling. And there's many points throughout my career where

I chose the harder right over the easier wrong in part because of the identity of me as a leader. What does a leader do? What decision does a leader of myself? What decision does a leader of my family? What does the decision of the leader of a team or a company or whatever tribe you have? What is the expectations you have of a leader to make? And then you make those decisions. And I mean, this goes all the way back to

The first couple episodes, actually the first a lot of episodes, we would have a longer conversation and divide it up into halves or thirds. think the first three episodes were with my business coach, John Michael Morgan, who I've worked with for like seven years. And, you know, one thing that John always says is income improvement always follows self-improvement, right? So his whole philosophy after doing this for decades, he had a very successful exit from his first company and now, you know, he's a seven figure coach and

He's seen this over and over again, that your external success in life will not outgrow your internal development. Leadership begins with who you're becoming. And in ⁓ way later, in episode 78 with Chris Wilkinson, he said, my best clients are those who understand they're going to grow and their businesses are going to grow. And you can't separate the two. Chris emphasized that personal growth drives professional growth.

You can't build a company bigger than your own mindset.

And then in episode 80 with Jim Carlo, he said, leadership isn't what you do, it's who you become. And I couldn't agree more. Leadership isn't about a set of skills to attain, it's about a person that you are becoming. And Jim reminds us that leadership flows out of identity. And when you grow yourself, you automatically grow your influence. So.

which critical here I would ask you, maybe a challenging or reflective question on this would be, you may shake your head. Yep. I agree with all of this. And if you listen to this podcast or half a long time, you probably do because if you strongly disagreed with that statement, you probably wouldn't keep listening. Um, but if you agree, what I would ask you is, know, Zig Ziller has this, you know, old and great quote that's been reused and recycled many times, which is, know, don't tell me your priorities. Show me your

calendar and your pocketbook and I'll tell you what they are. So let's take that at 21st century. Look at your calendar, where are you spending time, energy and money? And if you're not spending significant, not a little bit, significant amount of time and energy and money on your own development, are you really leading yourself first? Are you really, are you just saying this is a priority, saying this is a value of yours? You can say that all day.

If, but are you doing it? Are you living it? And is it actual commitment or is it just, just words you're saying to make yourself feel better? So that's my challenge to you. and if, and if you're not cool, what does that look like for you? ⁓ and you know, if you're a leader and you're trying to become the greatest version of yourself and you don't already have a coach, just to throw that out there. I mean, I don't know what you're doing. Like there's no one who's trying to be the best athlete in their sport that doesn't have a coach. That's.

like insanity. so if you're trying to become the best person you can be, you should probably find a great coach as well. you know, I spend, I spend a teacher salary on, year every year on coaching. have four coaches right now. Anything I want to get good at. have a coach. So that's one, but that's the only thing also, are you investing your time? How much are you reading? you listening to these podcasts? A great place to start. Are you reading newsletters? Like, are you joining groups and getting community around you with other people?

And are you building your own self-awareness? Are you challenging the ways, are you intentionally creating mission and vision and values for yourself? All those things come into play with lead yourself first. So I'm gonna spend more time on that one than probably any other ones because it is very passionate. I'm very passionate about all that, right? So now let's go on to, or let's look at.

our lesson two.

Building trust through service. All leadership requires trust. Great organizations require trust. People don't follow titles. They might obey titles.

They may do the tasks assigned to them by someone with a title, but they're not willingly follow them, right? If we want to be a leader, leader of someone who other people want to follow, who other smart, driven and dedicated people look around and they say, that's the person I want to follow. I want to follow them. I'm compelled. That requires trust. And what we found throughout these many conversations, right? I guess 99 conversations since this is the hundredth is that

Trust is built through service. You've probably heard the term servant leadership, but let's flush that out a little bit. It's about consistently showing up for people in ways that put the mission and humans ahead of your own ego.

And, you know, there are a moments there, the podcast that stood out that highlights what, you know, trust based leadership looks like. So, um, mentioned Jared Carlow before, obviously great episode. That was episode 80. He also said mentorship matters. Transformative leadership starts by helping others succeed. And what Jim's talking about is that great leaders elevate other people. You know, he had a great stories about when he worked for, uh, Ross Perot and business and just how great of a leader he was and how much people trusted.

him and when you help people grow, when you ask people, why are you here? why are you doing this job or why are you part of this organization? Or you ask, you're leading your family, ask your kids, ask your spouse, what do you want? What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to become? And how can I help you do that? Not let me tell you who I think you need to become or let me tell you the right actions to take.

starting with who are you trying to become and how can I help you grow? And when you do that, you earn trust that money and given authority just cannot buy. In episode 98, recently we had Atiba D'Souza, which is honestly probably, I'd have to relook this now I'm thinking about it, but definitely top three, if not number one, ⁓ coolest name of anyone on the podcast, Atiba D'Souza. And he was such a fun guest.

He asked, would your team follow you if you didn't pay them?

Right? He challenges leaders to look beyond compliance. And he says that true leadership is when people follow because of trust, respect and belief, not obligation. In episode 65 with Kevin Torff, he said, you'll learn how to stop micromanaging, empower your team to take ownership. That's true leadership. Stop micromanaging and empower your team to take ownership. So how do you...

empower people to take ownership. They have trust that you have their back, right? You've effectively communicated to them. You know, decision, one term I love to use is called the decision box. And I'm not sure if he came up with this, but I first encountered it reading Stanley McChrystal's book, team of teams and general Stanley McChrystal, He's a JSOC commander charged Delta force and SEAL team six. And he talked about clearly stating

And there's something I actually working with a current client on in their company is your decision box, everything inside this, you have free to act, you are free to action on. And I will have your back and you know our values and you know my intent. And I want you to go forth and be aggressive and push that. But there has to be trust for people to do that, for them to take ownership and for them to be willing to push a bit.

to make decisions to put themselves on the line? Woof.

They've got to have strong trust with you. one of the ways that we build trust, so this is a good time to have a different conversation here, is around integrity and trust. So not, you know, moralizing integrity, like is this morally wrong or morally not wrong? And that's what we think of integrity. What I'm talking about is alignment.

So is what you say is important? If what you say are the values of the organization or the values that you have, your values, do you make decisions and take actions that align with what you say your values, your mission are, what your priorities are?

And if there's alignment between inner self or let's think from a leadership perspective, between what you say and what you do, right? If you say, want you to make decisions inside this decision box, or I want you to take risks or, you know, I trust you to do this and then they do it and it's not exactly the way you wanted, or it doesn't go right. Do you still have their back? Do you still align with your initial stated?

intent, right? And there's also internal integrity, which I mentioned a second ago, which is more about self leadership to go back to that, which is

does your inner world, how you see yourself, again, what your values are, you, how you see yourself and who you are and how you're trying to become, do you make decisions that align with that? So an example would be, I value other people's time. Okay, great. Are you late to meetings?

Yes or no, right? Do you actually show you value people's time? Do you show up on time? Do you say that you want to make sure you're the people in your company have good work life balance, right? And they are taking care of their families because you know, if they take care of their families and their home life is great, they're going to be great employees or great team members. But then how do you talk about your spouse? How does your work life balance? Are they actually seeing you live those values? Because that's another way to build trust.

and also a quicker way to break trust. And that's a great example when it comes to things like integrity and trust, is that it takes a lifetime sometimes to build and it takes a moment, a moment to lose. So make sure that you create a strong trusting environment, right? That you create an environment where people can trust you, they feel safe to talk and share, and that what you say,

are your priorities, your mission, your values are what you actually enforce. So build trust through service. Put your people first. Three, it's about communication. Lead with questions, not answers. We want to be curious and coaching and development oriented. Great leaders don't have all the answers and they don't try to.

but they do ask better questions. They listen more deeply and they empower people to think instead of react. Remember I said, that's one reason I started this podcast because these are things that I knew I wanted to get better at. I was actively listening and asking better questions, right? Sometimes as leaders, we think that people expect us to be perfect or expect us to bring all the answers. And that's just not true. People do expect us to be authentic.

That's what they want.

One way to go back to the last point, building trust and all is to admit when you don't know. It's okay. I don't know the answer to that. Let's figure it out together. And also to, when you ask great questions and you empower people, you really allow them to grow. One of the ways that you can create a underperforming and mediocre team is to treat people like cogs in a machine.

Here are your tasks and instructions, go out and do them. Now, if you have a brand new entry level position, like sure, like maybe that, you you gotta learn to paint by the numbers first before you become, you know, an artist. But.

Trust that your people, the resource is inside of them. And also you want them, you want to train them how to think, not what to think. And so when you, you know, one of the great examples to throw out like tips and tricks, right? Like if you're the leader in the meeting, talk last, not first. Because if you ask a question or it comes up like, what should we do here? And you're like, well, I think da da da, what do you think? They think what you think because you're the leader and you just told them what you think. So.

Instead talk last, get everyone else's honest assessment. Then you can give your two cents, right? So leading with curiosity, not going into just correct, Hey, you didn't do this. You need to do it right. Hey, I noticed, I noticed what I saw was this. Can you tell me what your thought process was to solve this problem? Hey, I saw that this thing happened with this client. Can we go back and you walk me through

how this happened. need to understand it better. Probably the best episode on this was episode 75 with Ken Proctor, who I took his six month course called Art of the Question and go look up Ken. Again, episode 75, he's awesome. He's in Texas. his whole thing is teaching you how to ask better questions. And his quote from that episode was, you never learn anything when you're talking.

You only learn when you listen and when you ask questions. And I'm going to butcher another quote because I don't have it right in front of me. He has, but I've used with some of my clients, which is that real listening, feeling really heard is so rare that most people can't tell the difference between that and being loved. He said that I was like, Whoa, but if you think about it,

If you're sharing something, especially something you're passionate about or you're being vulnerable and someone really listens to you, they don't listen to respond, they really listen and then they ask a great follow-up question.

Feels awesome. Feels great, right? What a gift to be able to give to the people on our team. And what a fantastic way to create trust, create relationship and create just a positive culture that people want to be a part of. Cause ultimately the leadership is love. That's how I see it. It's about loving people. It's about caring about people. And if you can make them feel loved just by

listening, asking great questions. ⁓ man. You're so far ahead of so many other people and you inspire a sense of loyalty and of drive in the people on your team that gets them to new levels of performance. So another great example of this is episode 95, Eva Daniel, another one of my coaches. I did a great program through heroic public speaking, which I highly recommend.

Send me a message if you have questions about it. It's in like Pennsylvania, New Jersey area. Did a long program with them. It was great. I learned so much about being a, being a professional speaker. And then my one-on-one coaching, did some with Eva Daniel and she worked as like one of the head speech writers for Dave Ramsey for a while. She's here in Tennessee. But she said, her quote was, if you can't communicate your vision clearly, your leadership and your impact will stall. So again, we give questions and answers really about communication.

And what Eva really points out here is that even though she's, she's talking about leadership and communication and speaking, that clear communication starts with understanding first, not talking. Asking the right questions creates clarity to improve communication. And another point about communication I thought was really interesting and maybe is a sort of counterpoint to this or

is a different way to view it is an episode 97, Neelu core, talked about, she's, her book is called, be your own cheerleader and it's about self advocacy. And what she talked about is seeing quiet can cost you influence opportunity and fulfillment. And so there's two parts of this. You remind us that yes, leadership requires using your voice, but I think more importantly for

Maybe that really resonates with you and you need to speak up more and you need to self advocate. We had a great conversation on that episode. It's a recent episode. Again, look back at it around what that means in the age of AI and how much more important self advocacy is becoming and how a lot of people think that I'm just going to show up, put my head down and do a great job. And that's going to get me ahead. And that's not where the data shows. That is not what the data shows. So,

learning how to self advocate is really critical. And again, that's episode 97 with Nielukor and her book is called, Become Your Own Cheerleader. But what's important I think on this too for leaders is how do we create space for others to use their voice? So I'll tell you a tool I use in facilitation all the time, but also leading teams is one of your jobs as a leader of any meeting, especially at the higher levels, right?

Again, it's not to have answers, it's to be the facilitator who is pulling out the best ideas of the group, sparking the flames and think of the conversation that you're having at that table as like a campfire and you're moving logs around, right? And you're rolling them over so that you can spark and get the fire to continue to grow and get stronger. And so what I'll notice is when like maybe someone's been talked over, you know, maybe once or

twice or something where like, I know they have something to say, but they can't quite get it out and like giving them space to say, Hey, just a second, let's take a break. Uh, Hey Bill, I noticed that you seem like you had something to say that didn't get out. Can you please share that with us? Right? Or notice someone who seems like they're, they have something to say, but they haven't spoken up or like if you could reach and just give them space to share man.

the bond, the trust that comes from that. And then also the communication to get everyone's voice heard gets us to a more complete solution. So.

with great communication, it's really key as a leader. And maybe that's stating the obvious, but how are you working on communication as a leader? And maybe my test for here, or my reflection question for this principle is a tool that Ken Proctor, again, brought up to me where he has, and he had us do this in his course,

where when you're having a conversation or you're having someone talk to someone in your organization and they tell you something, it literally could be something about business. literally could be like something about their kids won their softball tournament or they went on a vacation instead of saying, ⁓ that's cool. I went to Italy three years ago. It was my favorite place. And my favorite thing about that was Capri and going on about you is when they state something, ask them three clarifying questions before you give your input.

So someone says, my family, we just got back from the best European vacation last week. ⁓ really? Where all did you go? What was your favorite? Why?

What was your biggest takeaway that's going to change the way you approach life from now on from that vacation? I mean, whatever, right? Like you could ask them a million different questions, but ask them three questions before you give your input. And if you want to double challenge this, if you have like teenage kids or older kids or even adult kids, or maybe it's with your parents, you know, if they're all like, do that with them, you do it with your spouse. Man, work today. You know, uh,

Ed really took over the meeting again. Bah bah bah bah bah. Oh really? Well tell me more about that.

What happened next? What are you thinking about how to approach this? Ask them three questions before you give your input. all right, fourth principle. And this is something we have to focus on, right? Which is staying resilient and adaptable. Leadership isn't a straight line. We all know in everything in life, anything hard or difficult we're gonna do, there's gonna be ups, there's gonna be downs. And how do we...

stay resilient and how do we ⁓ adapt to situations? Right? So, you know, there were three great examples of this. So one was in episode 82 with Sherry Cole, who was a long time and now Hall of Fame women's basketball coach at University of Oklahoma. And what she talked about was that real transformation happens in the small intentional behaviors you choose every

single day that her point is that resilience is built through daily habits, not giant leaps. And, know, she's really an example when she took over that, that basketball program, which was in complete shambles and turned into a national powerhouse was that, uh, you know, greatness as a result of, you know, quiet, consistency. And here's the thing about being resilient and adaptable. There's a few principles here before I give two more examples from the podcast, but

when our behavior, our mindset, our outlook, our energy is dependent on external sources on outcome, makes us less resilient and less adaptable. So a lot of this is getting very clear about who you are.

A lot of this is in my mind, for me personally, comes back to gratitude. We get so worked up around where we should, and I'm looking to the mirror right now, about where we think we should be, what we should have accomplished, what we wanna have, comparing ourselves on social media or on LinkedIn, wherever. We all know comparison is the thief of joy. And when you compare or,

when you are relying on external factors on getting the sale to be happy, on hitting numbers to be happy, on your partner, your family to show up a certain way for you to be happy, to have good energy, that makes you less resilient and less adaptable. people follow calm, assertive leadership, They follow people that even in that storm can be the calm and the chaos and make good decisions.

And to me, that's about being authentic to yourself. To me, that's also again about gratitude. because the world we live in is full of abundance for, not saying for everyone, for compared to how we've been in the past for everyone on the planet. And if you're listening to podcast, I guarantee you, you're in the top 10 richest people in the world. Like I can almost guarantee it. Like maybe I'm wrong. If you're listening, you know, we do have some listeners from all over the world and you know, that's awesome.

But man, that perspective from my time in places like Iraq and especially Afghanistan to look at how people live and the problems they're dealing with, if you really look objectively, man, we're just so full of abundance. in this present moment, my guess is you're not starving. In this present moment, my guess is that you aren't under siege. There's not Russian drones or bombs landing in your neighborhood. That's my guess.

Right? My guess is that you have physical safety. My guess is that you probably have an abundance of calories. My guess is right. That you have tons of opportunity in front of you, matter how your day goes. So if we can really like sink into that, that becomes important. So when we sink into that grad moment of gratitude and presence, it allows us to calmly deal with changes because the world is changing faster than ever. And it's just going to continue to get

to get faster and change faster. And so this is becoming even more of a key element for great leadership to separate great leaders from no limit leaders from others is how do you handle the change and how do you adapt and how do you not get attached? Like I think one of the phrases here is that to stay obsessed with

the problem you're trying to solve, not a solution. Right? So if you're an entrepreneur or you're in a company or you're trying to accomplish anything in any sort of team with your family, whatever, stay obsessed with the problem you're trying to solve with the mission. But too many people, especially maybe for an entrepreneur, if you're in a larger company, they get obsessed with a certain solution, a certain tool, and you lose sight of actually solving the problem. And then when a new solution becomes available or a new possibility, you're not open to it.

So stay obsessed with the problem, not solution. That's another way to stay resilient. And there's a great example of that in episode 93, when I talked with Blake Eastman, we had like a really cool conversation about AI. probably knows, like in terms of people I know personally, Blake Eastman knows more about AI than anyone I personally, everyone else I personally know. And I know a lot of people that work with AI a lot. And one thing he talked about is like embracing AI isn't optional for tomorrow's leaders. So like when it comes to artificial intelligence, I think the key here is,

that you can be a leader who does that, but think about it. You're basically the person who, you know, in the eighties or nineties is like, well, this computer thing is not going to take off. Like we're just going to keep pushing files around with the cart where the assistant up and down the floors. Good luck to you. If you don't think AI is going to impact what you do in one way, shape or form, but the key is to be adaptable, right? Leaders who resist change fall behind.

So need to continue to evolve and not necessarily change our mission or change the problem we're trying to solve in life or who we're trying to become, but we need to be flexible and adapt and explore and experiment, including with AI. And, finally in episode 98 with again, with Atiba, he talks about, learned leadership the hard way through failure, humility and growth. And Atiba in that episode 98 was really illustrated a great point about resilience through vulnerability, right?

failure is not the opposite of success. Failure is a nest is repeated. Failure is a necessary step and consequence of trying to do great things of success. Failure is a part of success and the people who can ⁓ fail faster again, I try more things adapt and not let that throw them off their game are the ones who are going to really excel. So yeah.

point for here, stay resilient, stay adaptable, stay true to who you are, stay calm in the chaos, don't let things throw you, don't attach who you are as a human being or your personal value or your energy to outside sources. And there's a lot of different ways to do that. I work with my clients on this all the time. there's a lot of different strategies I do for this, but for me, that's rooted a lot in gratitude and perspective.

I mean, if I stop when I'm getting worked up or have anxiety around something, I sit and be like right now, because my body's having this like visceral reaction. Like, like I'm getting in fight or flight because I'm worried about having a conversation. Like that's crazy. Right. our bodies have just adapted with this fear response that was meant to keep us safe from giant predators. And we're associating that with telling someone, no. ⁓

But we are, I'm not lessening it, but like it's a, can choose to see that situation differently. And that's a very extreme one, but like staying resilient and then staying adaptable, right? I think those things play together and just, you know, have fun. know, my two words for me going to 2026, I have two words every year. My words for last year were for 2025, were patience and consistency. I think I've done decent at that, but I'm transitioning already into my new words because I think it's just where I'm in life and it's playful and bold.

Like one of my goals is to, to, you know, peel back the curtain is like not take things so seriously. Like business, money, anything. Like, let's just have more fun. Like why not? Why not? And I think I, what I found is that I get better results when I approach things that way and I have more fun doing it. So why take things so seriously? Right? Like why are you doing this to yourself? Right? And I think it's also a lot more resilient because I can do that. If something is fun and you're being playful with it, how much longer can you do it?

Right? If like every call, whether it's a sales call or a marketing call or a huddle or doing this podcast, whatever, if I looked at this as like, Oh my God, I got so much to do today. Oh man, that's draining. I'm like, look, I get to do podcast episode today. Man, I might screw it up. I might not screw it up. I might have a coaching call. Might go great. Might suck. Might have a sales call or a vision call. It might go awesome. I may fall flat on my face. Whatever. Next thing. Hey, I could do that forever.

So let's think about mindset here, okay? where are you showing up and taking things too seriously? Where are you treating, a dollar in your bank account or a yes or no on a sales call or a difficult conversation? Like it's a life or death moment. My guess is that you could say that you're doing that more often than maybe you should be or could be. So yeah, work on resilience and adaptability and...

I need to do a whole episode on this because a part, a huge part of that also was like doing hard things and pushing yourself, getting used to high levels of stress so that, you don't lose resilience there. But anyway, look up stress inoculation, go do hard things, push yourself mentally and physically. And that makes kind of put things in perspective when you do hard things. So if life is feeling overwhelming, if you're feeling anxious about a lot of things, what I found is that people who do that often aren't pushing themselves.

really hard. Like people who regular life in America is like just beating them down with anxiety and they can't get over shit are not climbing Mount Everest or going on 15 mile rucks in the, the, you know, outside or not doing jujitsu or they're not doing a bunch of hot yoga. They're not like, I don't know, run a half marathons or they're not doing anything. They're not doing hard shit. That's what I found.

Now that's not always true, but there's more components to that. There's a mental component, but you can build resilience through just doing hard things. Okay. We have to either our fifth point because I could keep going on this. All right. Leading with purpose. All right. Leaders, inspiring leaders have strong convictions and passionate visions for their lives and for their organizations.

If you think about someone who doesn't have those two things, who's just like in it for themself or is sort of like wandering, are you following them anywhere? I doubt it, right? So.

really thinking through what is your purpose. And what I would argue here, what I call my North Star Theory, it's really more universal. And it says that every living creature is its most happy, content and fulfilled when its activities and environment align with this genetic purpose. And for human beings, our genetic purpose, or you could use the term spiritual purpose if you're comfortable with that, but either way, doesn't really matter. We're social creatures, we're tribal creatures.

And any sort of self-serving gratification, if that's your ultimate goal, is just more for yourself, more for me, if it's all about your ego, you're not inspiring anyone to follow you. And by the way, you're not gonna find fulfillment that way. That will be short-lived. As soon as you get the faster car, the bigger house, the arbitrary number in your bank account, the more interesting partner, whatever it is that you're trying to chase for yourself and sort of selfish gratification, as soon as you get that, that high is gonna fade and you're gonna need something else.

So true leaders strive for a noble purpose greater than themselves. It's literally one of the criteria for clients before I work with them. Do you have a big vision? Do you have a noble purpose? Do you have something big that you're chasing? And, and there's two parts of that. Is it bigger than yourself? Is it about positively impacting other people? Because if you have that,

and then you start falling through on it, now we can lead people, right? And so...

when you...

want to lead with purpose.

It's about clearly crafting what your vision is for the organization and how it's gonna change the world around you. Every great company has this. And I just think it's so important for us to, a lot of times maybe we have a purpose, but we don't articulate it well, right? So we definitely want to do that. And we definitely want to...

clarify for ourselves. So we're just not chasing the next shiny object. Right? When your purpose is clear, like everything aligns with that. know, one in my coaching practice, we talk about the vision is the boss and everything else is in service to that. So, you know, your energy, your focus, your relationships, your culture, everything aligns with your purpose, right? It's the difference between ambition and meaning.

⁓ Alex Ramos in his episode, he really helped me rediscover mine for my company. And he had a concept called the VizMiz, which he called a vision mission statement. And he combining vision mission into a statement. his sort of criteria was it had to be six words or less. And because of that, I had sort of this longer tagline or phrase, which is, no limit leader overcomes self-imposed barriers.

to unlock greatness in themselves and inspires others to do the same. That's still my website, I think. I used to say it all the time, but I changed my, my, you notice in my newsletter, it says this on my emails, my Vistmas is challenge limits, develop leaders, fuel greatness. That's not just like a tagline, that's my compass. I can test myself against it. Am I challenging limits? Am I accepting limits or am I pushing them? Am I developing leaders?

Okay. And am I fueling greatness in myself and others? know, Jim Carlo again, going back to him, he talks about, you know, reminds that leadership is a lifelong pursuit of integrity, empathy, and humor. He said, you'll never perfect leadership, but you can always practice it. So, you know, I've said many times is the cause worth the pain? And in meta performance coaching, which is, I'm going to have more.

coming up with some of the big changes in my coaching practice on this podcast soon. But sneak peek, when you create a thrilling vision, when you create this big purpose, it needs to be big enough to be worth the pain of transformation. Because if you create this big purpose that people are gonna strive toward an organization of how you're gonna impact the world or change the industry or whatever, change the lives of dozens or hundreds or thousands of people, whatever it is, it could be your church, it could be your family, could be whatever you're doing.

It needs to be big enough that you and the people in your organization are going to have to change. You're going to have to transform and get better. so having, this big goal that is about impacting others, and then you live that and you lead them toward it, now we're getting to no limit leadership. So as we look at that, right? All right.

Let's go through our five. So one, five principles that we found that are reoccurring themes at the heart of no limit leadership for the last hundred episodes. Lead yourself first, starts with you. Build trust through service. Lead with questions, not answers, all about communication. Stay resilient and adaptable and intentionally develop that and then lead toward a purpose, right? These aren't just ideas or theories. They're truth that we've seen over and over again on this podcast.

And I want to say this clearly, we're just getting started.

The last hundred episodes have been amazing and explore what great leadership looks like. And then the next hundred, we are going to really lean into helping you become the best leader you're capable of being. So man, just thank you again. This has been awesome. A hundred episodes we've got some really exciting, my biggest guests ever coming up and some big announcements coming up.

we're gonna have just expanding what this community is in so many ways. So make sure that you, if you're just listening to this or you listen every once in a while, make sure you subscribe or follow whatever you do here. And that way don't miss an episode. And then also maybe, I guess my one ask, right? I have a hundred episodes I've put, I don't even know, thousands hours into this thing. So my one ask for you would be,

share the podcast with one person, whether it's this episode or one that you think is relevant to them, just share it with one of your friends and have them give them the gift of a listen, give me that gift and let's continue to grow this thing. So here's the next chapter, here's the leaders we're becoming and here's the world we're shaping one leader at a time. Challenge limits, develop leaders, fuel greatness.